Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, was in town Thursday for Fort Benning's Officer Candidate School graduation of 152 newly minted second lieutenants.

Such events typically don't draw top brass, but one of the graduates, 2nd Lt. Peter Sprenger, has long-standing ties to Petraeus.

Sprenger, 26, served under Petraeus in the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. On Dec. 9, 2003, he was 10 months into his first deployment when an insurgent detonated a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. Sprenger lost his right eye in the attack. » read more

A student activist said about 20 students and a professor are still incarcerated this morning, after being arrested for refusing to leave a building on the University of California, Davis campus in protest of tuition increases.

Natalie Yahr, a UC Davis undergraduate, said that of the 52 arrested Thursday on misdemeanor trespassing charges, about 20 remain in the Monroe Detention Center. Yahr, who said one of those detained is UC Davis professor, is part of a group of students who were waiting in solidarity for students to be released at 7 a.m..

"We were told that they would all be released by 6 this morning but we are still waiting on more than 20 people," she said. "About 15 or 20 of us have stayed here all night waiting for our friends and fellow students — and a faculty member — to be released." » read more

A former Rhodes and Fulbright scholar already charged with student-loan fraud was indicted Thursday on six more counts of fraud by a federal grand jury in Anchorage.

Rachel Yould, 37, was charged with lying on her mortgage application for her downtown Anchorage condo.

The former academic star already faces 10 counts against her for allegedly defrauding student loan companies to amass some $600,000 in student loans. Prosecutors say she used a second Social Security number to get some of the money. She obtained the second identity through a federal program for victims of domestic violence. » read more

Hotel chains like to tout their large, comfortable beds as a selling point, but those 125-pound mattresses are likely causing greater injury to female, Hispanic and Asian hotel workers, according to a study to be published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine in January.

The union Unite Here provided data on 2,865 injuries at 50 hotels from the nation's five largest chains: Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels, InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott International and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. The study did not include luxury properties.

It was analyzed by a group of academics, who found that female, Hispanic and Asian hotel workers were 1.5 times more at risk of injury than white men. Hispanic housekeepers were twice as likely to be hurt. » read more

RALEIGH, N.C. — Dr. Earl Sunderhaus, an Asheville, N.C., eye doctor, has what might charitably be described as a brusque bedside manner.

That much is not in dispute.

But the N.C. Medical Board may decide Sunderhaus overstepped the bounds of decency when he recently told a patient she was irresponsible for being unemployed, on Medicaid, and relying on taxpayers to cover another pregnancy after giving birth less than a year earlier. What really galled her, the patient complained, is that Sunderhaus poked her thigh and told her she is fat. » read more